Lawsuit Claims One-Third of California Drinking Water Contaminated with Cancer-Causing Chemical

Πηγή: AllGov
By Ken Broder
August 19 2012

The movie Erin Brockovich made the chemical carcinogen chromium-6 infamous in 2000. A state law was passed in California the following year requiring formulation of a standard limiting its presence in drinking water by 2004.

Eight years later, two environmental groups have sued the state not only for its failure to put a standard in place; but for not even having agreed on one.

The Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Working Group filed suit in Alameda County Superior Court this week, pressing the government to accelerate the process. The state Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) suggested a “goal” in 2011, but it is up to the California Department of Public Health to set the standard.

The department’s website says it will release a draft recommendation next year on its way to a 2015 final determination.

Erin Brockovich chronicled the experience of residents in the small town of Hinckley, who were exposed to chromium-6 whenPacific Gas & Electric used the heavy metal to prevent rust in water towers. The water seeped into the groundwater and caused health problems that included bronchitis, asthma and lung cancer. PG&E settled with Hinckley residents in 1996 for $333 million.

There is some evidence that chromium-6 can damage DNA. Other studies have linked it to male reproductive harm, liver toxicity and blood disorders. The chemical is on California’s Prop. 65 list of substances known to cause cancer and reproductive harm.

It has long been known as dangerous if inhaled and in 2007 the federal government determined that it’s not OK to eat it either. There is no federal standard for chromium-6.

The state EPA suggested a standard of .02 parts per billion (ppb), which would be a significant improvement over levels found in some California cities by the Environmental Working Group. A 2010 study by the group found chromium-6 in 31 cities, including Riverside (1.69 ppb) and San Jose (1.34 ppb), both of which made the top 5 in the United States.

Chevron: The Toxic Threat Next Door

Chevron's Richmond refinery fire.

Πηγή: Common Dreams
By Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins
August 18 2012

When the fire broke out at the Chevron oil refinery in Richmond, California last week, this is what families living nearby–including some of our own staff at Green For All–experienced: Their windows rattled and their houses shook. Some of them watched fiery explosions and plumes of dark smoke pour from the refinery. Others just heard the frightening wail of the city’s emergency sirens. They gathered up their children and pets, covered their mouths and noses, and scrambled to seal their doors and windows.

Across the Bay, San Francisco residents watched as a toxic black cloud billowed over Richmond–a city in which 85 percent of the residents are minorities and roughly one-quarter live below the poverty line.

In the days after the fire, more than 9,000 people poured into emergency rooms, complaining of nausea, headaches, and breathing problems. Chevron, meanwhile, offered an apology for the “disruption.”

I wish that were enough. Enough to erase the terror that workers and families experienced that day. Enough to prevent the potentially long-term illnesses they face as a result of breathing those toxic fumes. And I wish it were enough to undo the health problems that Richmond’s families have faced for years.

The truth is, it doesn’t take a massive explosion to send folks in this neighborhood to the hospital. Here, next door to the refinery–which has consistently violated the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act–rates of ovarian, prostate, and breast cancer are among the highest in the state, along with incidents of childhood asthma.

But it’s not just about Richmond. Across America, hundreds of other cities choke in the shadow of dangerous, polluting oil operations. Who lives in these cities and neighborhoods? By and large, people of color. In California, a staggering 62 percent of residents living near polluting oil refineries, cement plants, and power plants are people of color. Not surprisingly, rates of asthma are dramatically higher in these communities: One out of every six African-American children in this country suffers from asthma, compared with one in ten nationwide.

No one–whether they’re from Richmond or anywhere else–should have to live in fear of this kind of disaster. They shouldn’t be forced to breathe toxic fumes or drink polluted water just because companies like Chevron refuse to clean up their act. This is a corporation, after all, that raked in almost $27 billion in profits last year–but failed to spend any of it to fix the leaky 40 year-old pipe that almost cost its workers and neighbors their lives.

But we don’t need to wait around for Chevron to do what’s right. We have a choice. We can embrace cleaner, safer, healthier forms of energy and leave oil where it belongs–in the last century.

The first step is to stop rewarding companies like Chevron and BP with billions in subsidiesfrom taxpayers’ pockets while we ask hardworking Americans–especially low-income and minority kids–to pay the price with their health. Instead, we should invest in forms of energy that don’t pollute our air and water.

This isn’t a distant dream; the clean energy revolution is already well underway. Over the past four years, America’s wind and solar sectors have grown substantially–wind power has doubled and solar increased six-fold–enough to power 15 million homes. We’re less dependent on fossil fuels than we have been in decades. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that clean energy and other industries that protect our air and water already employ roughly 3.1 million Americans in safe, good-paying jobs that can’t be shipped overseas.

Many of these are the type of jobs that create pathways into the middle class–and out of poverty. They’re exactly the type of jobs that can transform communities like Richmond.

The fight for clean energy is not just an environmental issue. It’s a human rights issue.

Every child deserves to breathe clean air and drink clean water. No matter whether they’re rich or poor, no matter whether they’re black, white, Asian, or Latino. We all deserve to live without the fear of a toxic disaster next door. It’s that simple. But in this country, people of color have shouldered the burden of polluting industries for too long–and it’s time to stop.

All we have to do is decide: Do we stand by and wait for the next oil disaster? Do we sit quietly while our kids struggle to breathe? Do we continue to spend our hard-earned dollars rewarding companies like Chevron with subsidies and tax breaks? Or do we change the game?

Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins is the Chief Executive Officer of Green For All.

New York, California hitting up millionaires, again

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, right, listens to State Senate Minority Leader John Sampson during a conversation, before a jobs bill signing ceremony held at Medgar Evers College on Friday, Dec. 9, 2011 in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Πηγή: Kyivpost
By AP
Dec 10 2011

Hollywood moguls and Manhattan stock brokers are facing a slap by the Occupy Wall Street movement as California and New York again target high-wage earners to address a continued fiscal crisis in the states.

On Wednesday, with the urging of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York raised its top tax rate on single filers making $1 million and joint filers making $2 million, a rate just slightly under the 2008 income tax surcharge that expires Dec. 31.

Earlier this month in California, Gov. Jerry Brown said he, too, wants to avoid further cuts to education and social services by proposing a ballot initiative asking voters to increase taxes. That could hit Californians making over $250,000 a year.

"Occupy turned the political conversation on its head," said Richard Brodsky, a senior fellow at the Wagner School at New York University. "Time was austerity and tax cuts were the only acceptable place to be. Now, income inequality and the 99 percent dominate practical politics. OWS paved the way; Cuomo and Brown seized the moment."

There's no evidence of a national groundswell after more than a dozen states tapped their well-heeled residents for temporary income tax hikes from 2006-2009. But while most of those states let their temporary tax increases lapse as scheduled, New York and California this month went back to seeking revenue from the wealthy.

Despite the political rhetoric, there's less need in either state to act to make their tax brackets more fair. California and New York already have more progressive systems than most states, according to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation based in Washington, D.C.

"California and New York are historically not going to be the most fiscally conservative states," said Mark Robyn, an economist with the Tax Foundation. "To say they reflect the overall country's attitude to taxing the wealthy at a disproportionate rate, that might be tenuous."

California and New York are also among only four states, with Washington state and Missouri, to show deficits in a midyear survey by the National Conference of Legislatures, said the group's Mandy Rafool.

California faces a $3.7 billion shortfall for the current fiscal year and projected $12.8 billion deficit in 2013. New York learned of an unexpected $350 million deficit this year, and a higher projected deficit for the 2012-13 fiscal year of $3.5 billion.

But Rafool said there's no inkling more states will follow California and New York, although tax revenues are growing only slowly in most states.

"It's an election year and we're seeing that revenues are recovering, spending is stable," Rafool said. "This is better than in the last four years. It's still not good, but it's better."

She said she'd be surprised if other states follow New York and California.

Instead, the common thread is that each state's finances are worse than most other states, and their Democratic leadership has felt pressure from the Occupy Wall Street movement and other progressives.

In New York, an Occupy Albany movement has camped outside the state Capitol all fall. At first, Cuomo, a Democrat who ran as a fiscal conservative last year, tried to evict them, only to be stymied by the local Democratic district attorney and mayor. Occupy Albany called Cuomo "Gov. 1 Percent" for opposing a millionaire tax and saying it would drive employers out of state. The Occupy Wall Street movement claims that there is growing inequality between the wealthiest 1 percent of the population and the remaining 99 percent.

Meanwhile the Democratic Party that Cuomo heads and his progressive allies continued to push for a new millionaire tax to avoid more cuts to education and health care.

In November, Cuomo made a hard left and pushed for the millionaire tax increase passed Wednesday that includes a modest, but rare middle class tax break. The package also provided more spending for jobs programs.

"My job as governor is to make the best decision at the time to meet the needs of the state at the time," Cuomo said Wednesday.

"You're seeing it play out on college campuses," said the California state Senate's Democratic leader, Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento. "You're seeing it play out in different communities throughout California. There's a real sense that the pendulum in terms of the way we've had to deal with these budget deficits, has gone too far."

But while there may be an immediate payoff in cash and politics, the long-term wisdom of soaking the rich has long been questioned.

"As many states face increasingly large budget shortfalls that are often related to economic cycles, leaning on high-income earners and small businesses to pick up a disproportionate amount of the bill raises serious equity concerns and is bad for government revenue stability," said Scott Drenkard, an analyst with the Tax Foundation.

He notes many businesses, 94 percent of which file as individuals, and high-income earners have the most volatile income. If the economy continues to slip, they will have less revenue and that could further hurt businesses or prompt them to flee.

New York and California already share another distinction: They have experienced some of the greatest flight of taxpayers from 1999 to 2009 and have tax structures considered among the least attractive to businesses, according to the Tax Foundation.

"It reminds me of the Bob Dylan song, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing," said Doug Muzzio, a Baruch College politics professor in New York City. He said continuing fiscal crisis and the Occupy Wall Street movement could force the same consideration elsewhere.

"Without any real evidence except for what I've seen here, I would think that the other states almost invariably will have to examine it," he said.

Grand jury indicts 55 for $250 million in tax scams

Πηγή: Reuters
Oct 3 2011

A grand jury has indicted 55 people for participating in scams that tried to bilk the government out of more than $250 million in undeserved tax refunds, prosecutors in California said on Monday.

Thirty-two indictments were returned by the grand jury accusing the people of various schemes to obtain the refunds. Millions of dollars were paid out, including a check worth almost $1.2 million, the prosecutors said.

The owners of one California company were accused of making presentations that claimed customers could get tax refunds from a "secret government account" after making payments to the company and agreeing to pay a percentage of any refunds they received, the prosecutors said.

More than 400 false tax returns were filed with the IRS as a result of the scheme allegedly run by a firm called Old Quest Foundation Inc. and another 35 were filed in a scheme allegedly run by another group, De la Fuente and Ramirez and Associates.

3 Most Desperate Cities Include Vallejo, Calif., Harrisburg, Pa., Central Falls, R.I.

Πηγή: ABCnews
By ALAN FARNHAM
Sept. 8, 2011


Vallejo, California, wasn't heaven, maybe. But at least it wasn't hell. Then, in 2008, bankruptcy hit this city on the northern rim of San Francisco Bay hard. Budget cuts shuttered fire houses and thinned the ranks of police. Abandoned and foreclosed homes pockmarked neighborhoods. As businesses left Vallejo and taxpayers fled, prostitutes and drug-sellers moved in.

Vallejo knows what it's like to go through desperate times—a distinction it shares with similarly-blighted towns and counties around the U.S., including Central Falls, R.I.; Harrisburg, Pa; Boise County, Idaho, and Jefferson County, Ala.

All these municipalities are either facing bankruptcy, have already declared it, or, like Vallejo, are now emerging from it painfully, scarred and withered versions of their former selves.

Few cities get so desperate as to seek bankruptcy protection. Since 1937, when Chapter 9 filings first became an option for municipalities, there have been only 625 filings, says Chicago attorney James Spiotto, who has written books on the subject. Only five communities this year have filed for bankruptcy. Six filed in 2010.

For some towns, bad times arrived slowly, by a variety of roads. For others, a single event tipped them into darkness.

The closing, in the 1990s, of a U.S. Navy base pulled the financial rug out from under Vallejo. Boise was the victim of bad legal luck: A jury ruled in 2010 that the county had wrongly prohibited a developer from building a teen treatment center. The developer won a $4 million judgment, which Boise has been hard-pressed to pay.

Harrisburg fell victim to the "incinerator from hell"—a waste-to-energy incinerator whose renovation caused the town to go $310 million into debt, five times as much money as the city has in its general fund, according to the Stateline newspaper. Pennsylvania in December declared the city—its capitol—financially distressed.

Jefferson County in Alabama, home to Birmingham, has been suffering for three years from the collapse of a sewer bond refinancing. As of mid-August, it stood poised to file the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, according to Bloomberg News. It has since delayed filing, to continue negotiating with its creditors.

So strapped is the county that it can't afford to make repairs to its aging bridges. For safety, school busses must go around them, racking up 1,722 miles in detours at an added cost of $2.5 million a year, reports Bloomberg.

Central Falls' economy declined over many years, starting in the 1970s, when local textile makers began moving plants overseas. Some 1,400 jobs ultimately were lost, according to the National Council of Textile Organizations. Crime increased to the point that Central Falls in 1986 was crowned the Cocaine Capital of new England by Rolling Stone magazine.

According to court papers, Central Falls ran out of money to pay its bills August 31. It has a structural budget deficit of $5.6 million and an unfunded liability of about $80 million for retirement benefits and pensions. The New York Times describes the tiny town—just over 1 square mile in size--as impoverished.

To stave off bankruptcy, Central Falls now is trying to wrest back from its police and firemen some $2.5 million in promised pension benefits. It has eliminating funding its library, laid off staff, and has closed a community center.

All this pales, however, before what Vallejo has been through.

The town has become overrun by crime and prostitution in the wake of budget cuts that have reduced the city's police force by almost half. Prostitutes and pimps can be seeing plying their trade in the middle of residential areas.

Local resident Kathy Beistel, 48, told ABC News the city's problems have landed literally on her doorstep: "The final straw" for her, she says, was "a pimp fight in front of my house." When she called police to report the incident, she was told there weren't enough officers left to handle such problems. "We used to have 158 officers," Vallejo police Chief Robert Nichelini told ABC. "We have 90 now."

In response, residents, including Beistel, have taken matters into their own hands, instituting a neighborhood watch program, its official name The Kentucky Street Watch Owls. Unofficially, they're called the "Ho Patrol."

Solution to the Economic Crisis? North Dakota’s Economic “Miracle”—It’s Not Oil

Πηγή: Global Research
By Ellen Brown
September 3, 2011

North Dakota has had the nation's lowest unemployment ever since the economy tanked. What's its secret?

In an article in The New York Times on August 19th titled “The North Dakota Miracle,” Catherine Rampell writes:

Forget the Texas Miracle. Let’s instead take a look at North Dakota, which has the lowest unemployment rate and the fastest job growth rate in the country.

According to new data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics today, North Dakota had an unemployment rate of just 3.3 percent in July—that’s just over a third of the national rate (9.1 percent), and about a quarter of the rate of the state with the highest joblessness (Nevada, at 12.9 percent).

North Dakota has had the lowest unemployment in the country (or was tied for the lowest unemployment rate in the country) every single month since July 2008.

Its healthy job market is also reflected in its payroll growth numbers. . . . [Y]ear over year, its payrolls grew by 5.2 percent. Texas came in second, with an increase of 2.6 percent.

Why is North Dakota doing so well? For one of the same reasons that Texas has been doing well: oil.

Oil is certainly a factor, but it is not what has put North Dakota over the top. Alaska has roughly the same population as North Dakota and produces nearly twice as much oil, yet unemployment in Alaska is running at 7.7 percent. Montana, South Dakota, and Wyoming have all benefited from a boom in energy prices, with Montana and Wyoming extracting much more gas than North Dakota has. The Bakken oil field stretches across Montana as well as North Dakota, with the greatest Bakken oil production coming from Elm Coulee Oil Field in Montana. Yet Montana’s unemployment rate, like Alaska’s, is 7.7% percent.

A number of other mineral-rich states were initially not affected by the economic downturn, but they lost revenues with the later decline in oil prices. North Dakota is the only state to be in continuous budget surplus since the banking crisis of 2008. Its balance sheet is so strong that it recently reduced individual income taxes and property taxes by a combined $400 million, and is debating further cuts. It also has the lowest foreclosure rate and lowest credit card default rate in the country, and it has had NO bank failures in at least the last decade.

If its secret isn’t oil, what is so unique about the state? North Dakota has one thing that no other state has: its own state-owned bank.

Access to credit is the enabling factor that has fostered both a boom in oil and record profits from agriculture in North Dakota. The Bank of North Dakota (BND) does not compete with local banks but partners with them, helping with capital and liquidity requirements. It participates in loans, provides guarantees, and acts as a sort of mini-Fed for the state. In 2010, according to the BND’s annual report:

The Bank provided Secured and Unsecured Federal Fund Lines to 95 financial institutions with combined lines of over $318 million for 2010. Federal Fund sales averaged over $13 million per day, peaking at $36 million in June.

The BND also has a loan program called Flex PACE, which allows a local community to provide assistance to borrowers in areas of jobs retention, technology creation, retail, small business, and essential community services. In 2010, according to the BND annual report:

The need for Flex PACE funding was substantial, growing by 62 percent to help finance essential community services as energy development spiked in western North Dakota. Commercial bank participation loans grew to 64 percent of the entire $1.022 billion portfolio.

The BND’s revenues have also been a major boost to the state budget. It has contributed over $300 million in revenues over the last decade to state coffers, a substantial sum for a state with a population less than one-tenth the size of Los Angeles County. According to a study by the Center for State Innovation, from 2007 to 2009 the BND added nearly as much money to the state’s general fund as oil and gas tax revenues did (oil and gas revenues added $71 million while the Bank of North Dakota returned $60 million). Over a 15-year period, according to other data, the BND has contributed more to the state budget than oil taxes have.

North Dakota’s money and banking reserves are being kept within the state and invested there. The BND’s loan portfolio shows a steady uninterrupted increase in North Dakota lending programs since 2006.

According to the annual BND report:

Financially, 2010 was our strongest year ever. Profits increased by nearly $4 million to $61.9 million during our seventh consecutive year of record profits. Earnings were fueled by a strong and growing deposit base, brought about by a surging energy and agricultural economy. We ended the year with the highest capital level in our history at just over $325 million. The Bank returned a healthy 19 percent ROE, which represents the state’s return on its investment.

A 19 percent return on equity! How many states are getting that sort of return on their Wall Street investments?

Timothy Canova is Professor of International Economic Law at Chapman University School of Law in Orange, California. In a June 2011 paper called “The Public Option: The Case for Parallel Public Banking Institutions,” he compares North Dakota’s financial situation to California’s. He writes of North Dakota and its state-owned bank:

The state deposits its tax revenues in the Bank, which in turn ensures that a high portion of state funds are invested in the state economy. In addition, the Bank is able to remit a portion of its earnings back to the state treasury .... Thanks in part to these institutional arrangements, North Dakota is the only state that has been in continuous budget surplus since before the financial crisis and it has the lowest unemployment rate in the country.

He then compares the dire situation in California:

In contrast, California is the largest state economy in the nation, yet without a state-owned bank, is unable to steer hundreds of billions of dollars in state revenues into productive investment within the state. Instead, California deposits its many billions in tax revenues in large private banks which often lend the funds out-of-state, invest them in speculative trading strategies (including derivative bets against the state’s own bonds), and do not remit any of their earnings back to the state treasury. Meanwhile, California suffers from constrained private credit conditions, high unemployment levels well above the national average, and the stagnation of state and local tax receipts. The state’s only response has been to stumble from one budget crisis to another for the past three years, with each round of spending cuts further weakening its economy, tax base, and credit rating.

Not all states have oil, of course (and it’s hardly a sustainable economic basis), but all could learn from the state-owned bank that allows North Dakota to capitalize on its resources to full advantage. States that deposit their revenues and invest their capital in large Wall Street banks are giving this economic opportunity away.

US railway blocked phones to quash protest

Πηγή: Aljazeera
By Evan Hill
12 Aug 2011 23:04



A rail transit provider in the United States disabled mobile phone services to prevent a planned protest on Thursday, attracting criticism and unflattering comparisons to crackdowns on dissent in the Middle East.

Demonstrators in northern California's Bay Area had planned a protest to condemn the shooting death of Charles Hill, who was killed on July 3 after Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police officers responded to complaints about a drunk man at a station in the city of San Francisco.

Hill was fatally shot in the torso - police said he had lunged with a knife - and protesters responded eight days later with a demonstration that shut down three San Francisco BART stations.

BART's police force had been criticised before, in 2009, after a white officer responding with several colleagues to a complaint restrained an unarmed black man on the ground of a train platform and then fatally shot him in the back. That shooting also prompted protests, and the officer served less than two years in prison after being convicted of involuntary manslaughter.

In a statement released on Friday, BART said organisers planned another protest over the Charles Hill shooting during busy commute times on Thursday, which "could lead to platform overcrowding and unsafe conditions".

"Organisers planning to disrupt BART service on [Thursday] stated they would use mobile devices to co-ordinate their disruptive activities and communicate about the location and number of BART police," the statement said.

"BART asked wireless providers to temporarily interrupt service at select BART stations as one of many tactics to ensure the safety of everyone on the platform."

James Allison, the deputy chief communications officer for BART, told Cnet News that mobile services were disabled in four San Francisco stations from 4pm to 7pm local time.

But BART offered varying explanations, likely with different legal ramifications, for how the shutdown had actually occurred.

In its first statement, BART said it had asked mobile service providers to stop their service. Then, a BART deputy police chief told the local online news outlet SF Appeal that BART turned off the services itself, as it is allowed to do under its contracts with the providers - Sprint, Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. Around the same time, BART changed its official statement - which was posted on its website - to say that "BART temporarily interrupted service".

Unflattering comparisons

The mobile phone disruption comes at a sensitive time: Regimes in the Middle East have in the past eight months used far harsher Internet and mobile phone blackouts to squelch dissent, and UK Prime Minister David Cameron suggested this week that he would examine ways to hamper the use of social media to prevent civil disturbances and riots like those that brought violence and looting to London and other cities over the past week.

The online hacker group Anonymous launched a campaign, OpBART, to overwhelm the transit agency with faxes and emails, and critics on Twitter began relaying news of the communications shutdown using the hashtag #muBARTek, a play on the last name of ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

On Thursday, BART police Lieutenant Andy Alkire told the local Bay City News agency that while it was unusual to block mobile services, it was "a great tool to utilise for this specific purpose".

Linton Johnson, BART's spokesman, told the local KTVU television channel that BART "didn’t try to shut down the protest. They simply turned off the cell service so it couldn't become viral.

"It really is just a cost-benefit analysis of where your freedom of speech begins to threaten the public safety."

Blackout a legal uncertainty

Federal law makes jamming mobile phones illegal in the United States, but in its statement, BART said it had asked wireless providers to "temporarily interrupt" their own services.

If BART did not block service itself, then different regulations would apply, but telecommunications companies still have a legal obligation to provide services as part of being granted federal licenses to operate.

"This may well affect the legality of BART's actions ... but it doesn't affect the impact," said David Wagner, a computer science professor at the University of California - Berkeley who has written about wireless communications security. "In this day and age, deliberately disrupting cellphone service is dangerous to public safety, no matter how it is done."

The wireless service in BART's underground stations is provided by Sprint, Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. Wagner said the providers could have cut off service in multiple ways, some less sophisticated than others.

The companies could simply have shut down cellular base stations providing signals near the particular BART platforms, he said, or they could have employed a more complicated method of triangulation using multiple base stations to determine cell phones' exact locations, which is done for 911 emergency calls.

"It might be technologically possible for carriers to use this location information to target phones within a particular neighbourhood and shut down service to all phones in that neighborhood," he said. "However, this might require more sophistication, so I don't know whether cellphone carriers would have been able to pull this approach together on short notice."

Jesse Choper, a professor at the Berkeley School of Law and a constitutional law expert, said BART could argue it had acted to preserve public safety rather than halt a protest but that blocking mobile services to entire areas may have obstructed more free speech than was necessary.

The US Supreme Court has never dealt with a case such as the BART communication shutdown, Choper said, but in the past has issued opinions that lay out how authorities may prevent protests.

Any move to block a demonstration must satisfy four basic criteria, he said. It must be neutral on the content of the demonstration, serve a significant government interest, leave open an alternative venue, and be narrowly tailored to avoid restricting more free speech than is necessary, he said.

If he were arguing in BART's defence, Choper said, he would say that the broad mobile phone blackout had not discriminated based on the content of the protest, that it served the significant interest of protecting public safety, and that protesters could still have demonstrated elsewhere, such as forming a picket line outside the stations.

But it could be argued, Choper said, that the service shut down had obstructed more communications than needed.

"The question is, what less should they have done," he said. "Would you want them to monitor every call?"

California fighting back on Colombia free trade act

Πηγή: California Progress Report  
By Tim Robertson
24 May 2011

Since 2005, more than half the trade unionists murdered in the world have been killed in Colombia. That's more in Colombia alone than in the other 190+ countries combined. Just last year, 51 more trade unionists were murdered bringing the total since 1986 to over 2700. Unfortunately, President Obama is ignoring these facts to push for the long-stalled Colombia Free Trade Agreement, a relic of the Bush Administration, in a move that can only be seen as an affront to his union base.

Not only is Colombia the most dangerous place in the world for union activity, an implied complicity with Colombia's government, in particular the Department of Administrative Security (DAS), has led to an approximate 96% impunity rating. Could you imagine the U.S. response if over the course of 2010, there were one CEO murder per week in Colombia with little investigation and few convictions or punishments? It certainly wouldn't be to liberalize trade rules.

Sadly, the President knows and understands the plight of unionists, peasant leaders, Afro-Colobians, and other organizers in Colombia. He even campaigned against the FTA because of such violence.